


first blood part two

by mockturtletale



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Minor Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 04:27:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16211387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: he knows it was aaron who pulled him out of it because only andrew and aaron are small enough to comfortably fold a hold around his ribs and andrew is standing fifteen feet away with both his gloves off and his lip split right down the middle.‘hot,’ neil thinks, and maybe says out loud, because aaron is shaking his head in disgust and walking away.





	first blood part two

**Author's Note:**

> i don't even really know what in the hell this is, beyond the fact that it's for my girl cory. 
> 
> i think it's maybe kind of like five times people expected andrew and/or neil to lose their shit but were (un)pleasantly surprised but also i like to take rules as mere suggestion so bear that in mind. 
> 
> mentioned sexual assault and canon typical violence as tagged; nothing major or massively graphic but please tread gently still. set to take place after the books but no real spoilers thereto, just a small cast of added original characters as foxes: the next generation. 
> 
> shoutout to my beta and sister for calling part of this "the gayest sentence you've ever managed to formulate in your entire miserable existence" even though i was actually talking about sports stuff. 
> 
> title is a rambo movie title that has always made me laugh because it's such a ridiculous and wonderful contradiction.

andrew is no longer certain that blowing tilda’s inheritance - not only in it’s entirety but also several times over by now - was actually worth it. 

none of the new freshman have cars, so between wymack’s efforts to keep practice attendance fairly balanced and neil’s relentless scheming to make it look like andrew even sometimes respects the rules, andrew is spending a lot of time behind the wheel these days, ferrying fox kits to and fro. 

in his car has always been one of andrew’s favorite places to be, so that’s not the problem. 

what is the problem is - 

“hey, there’s dad. hi dad! mister nurse sir, this is my dad.” it’s almost funny, the sight of a regular sized man and neil collectively struggling to lead the foxes mammoth freshman goaltender towards andrew, where he’s been idling at the curb. it’s almost funny for the sheer absurdity of the scene, but also it’s not at all even a little bit funny because - 

“i mean, this is also my dad,” holt is gesturing at neil now, the arm he’d had around neil’s shoulders lifting to pat clumsily at neil’s hair, “but this is my dad neil and that’s my dad andrew. dad andrew is very small on the outside, but like … HE GOES ON FOREVER on the inside. it’s all vast and terrifying and so super dark in there. with like … ghosts. and mirrors. dad andrew is a haunted house, maybe. but he’s nice! or. he’s not not nice. except for all the punching and swearing and threatening to slit people’s throats. other than that, he’s the best dad i ever had. ever. ever ever for real, pinky swear, no hyperbole, yes homo - the best. except for neil.” 

holt has reached the car by now and begins to reach in through the driver’s window, his great paw-like hands going straight for andrew’s hair. 

andrew is pretty sure neil would be frantically putting a stop to this, if he wasn’t leaning against the car laughing himself near-sick instead. he hopes, at least. and isn’t that just wild - andrew hoping. 

everyone else on the team who owned a vehicle had been pretty quick to volunteer for the job of picking holt up from getting his wisdom teeth removed, and the result had been all round disappointment when andrew drew the short stick. he’s got a feeling that reaction would have been dramatically different if any of them had been able to foresee this debacle and is briefly grateful for the fact that not even the depraved and twisted minds of the individuals he is unfortunately bound to would ever be capable of doing this scene justice. 

“sometimes i call dad neil ‘daddy’ but that’s mostly by mistake and he promised he wouldn’t tell.”

“um …” the poor dental nurse is backing slowly away, trying to subtly make for the safe haven of the office block behind them. 

“it’s not a weird sex thing, ewwwww,” colt pretends to retch, blood dribbling out of the side of his mouth and the sight of it soothing andrew just slightly, “they’re my parents, man, gross.” 

they are two and three years older than colt respectively. 

andrew thinks generally tolerating a teammate who although new to the line this year and about as fucked up as the rest of them remains mostly quiet and mostly inoffensive thereafter, doesn’t even begin to constitute anything close to parental rights or responsibilities. 

andrew also thinks colt might have gotten his hands on some gummi bears before he twisted his fingers into the slightly longer hair at andrew’s crown. the contact has taken a distinctly sticky and thickly unpleasant turn. as has this day. 

“get in the car, colt,” andrew says, looking out over the steering wheel once more. 

colt salutes and then does. 

neil slides in behind andrew and buckles up, face falling into some semblance of somber when their gazes catch for a second and snag in the rearview mirror as andrew backs out of the space. 

“i mean … we did give him the sex talk?” 

“you did,” andrew corrects, “and only because it was that or have him even more traumatized by nicky.”

“sure,” neil agrees, “but you didn’t object.” 

andrew doesn’t know what that means. 

“i don’t know what that means.” 

“probably not a lot, really. except for the fact that it’s you. and you stayed. and you actually answered when he asked about the respective merits of water and oil based lube. allison still doesn’t believe that happened, by the way.” 

andrew doesn’t give a shit what allison does or doesn’t believe. he doesn’t give a shit about their freshmen’s sex life, either. 

colt is snoring and still leaking from the mouth when andrew pulls away from the curb, so he doesn’t interject eitherway. 

“are you ready and able to raise a child, neil?” andrew asks, and doesn’t so much as glance toward the rear view mirror, “because i know that isn’t,” he jerks a thumb toward the passenger seat, “and you’re team captain, or so the recent and drastic deterioration of my life would seem to indicate.” 

there is silence from the backseat. 

“andrew, colt is gay. that’s why we had to give him the sex talk.” 

next to him, colt stirs in his drug laced sleep and says something that sounds a lot like “papa.” 

“but think of the butt babies, neil,” andrew says, so glad to find that neil is still scowling when they’re done hauling a monstrous and dribbling goalie sub into the elevator. 

some things have changed a lot, but others are still sacred, after all. 

 

 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 

 

tonight they’re facing off against more of their court teammates than they would with any other team in the league. the commentators speculate that this means they can expect far fewer cards than usual, given that both teams know and respect one another on a personal and professional level. 

it’s like they didn’t read “palmetto state foxes” on the schedule. 

neil knows by now that you can’t count for or against anything when it comes to this team and that’s only a bad thing a fraction of the time in his opinion. 

there are two minutes left on the clock and the foxes are ahead by four goals, but the scoreboard announcing this is the last thing neil sees before he’s being grabbed around the middle by a pair of arms in an orange jersey and yanked backwards across the court until he’s pressed face first into the glass and kept there. 

he blinks and an image materialises, seconds too late for him but much, much later for ryan, who actually plays on neil’s line for court, but who has also just tried to take neil out at the knees with a racket that neil knows to be even heavier than his own, bolstered by the kind of force that has already broken bones this season. 

all hell breaks loose and neil can mostly only hear that in the form of shouts, tossed rackets, rolling helmets and pained grunts. 

the refs posit that they should maybe forget about the dwindling minutes that had been left in the game and the other team agrees, probably because three of their players are currently being carried off the court. 

“what,” is the first thing neil thinks to say when he manages to shove out of aaron’s hold and get a look at the court, gear strewn all over it and the crowd still roaring in a way that might be celebrating a fox victory but is probably just a primal, bloodthirsty response to the aftermath of a violent line brawl. 

he knows it was aaron who pulled him out of it because only andrew and aaron are small enough to comfortably fold a hold around his ribs and andrew is standing fifteen feet away with both his gloves off and his lip split right down the middle. 

‘hot,’ neil thinks, and maybe says out loud, because aaron is shaking his head in disgust and walking away, the only player on their team who willingly didn’t get into a fight tonight, apparently. 

“i accepted that i was probably going to die because of you years ago, but i really didn’t think it was going to be by suicide,” he says before he stalks off the court. 

neil is on his heels but instead of following him back to the locker room he stops right in front of andrew and takes his head in his hands, tilting his face up into the burning court lights to get a better look at his mouth. for medical reasons. 

neither of them say anything, because there isn’t anything that needs to be said. 

 

#

 

ryan, the guy who instigated the whole mess by trying to cripple neil starts his media scrum by congratulating the foxes on having matured enough to keep two players cardless after a game and nicky takes a bow in front of the tv to the rousing applause of everyone except aaron, who again walks away, apparently done enough with their antics for tonight that he doesn’t even have the patience to finish changing out his gear. 

he’s still in his underarmor when grace says “hey is that -” and yes, that is aaron on screen, pushing through the reporters and camera crew. 

he doesn’t say a thing, just punches ryan right in the mouth, shrugs when he goes down, and holds a single finger up to the camera feed that’s being broadcast before he walks back out of frame. 

 

 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 

 

if he were some superstitious or faith inclined kind of idiot, andrew would put it down to a sixth sense. 

instead, he knows it’s just experience that has his heartbeat picking up when his phone drags his attention away from the path he’s been pacing back and forth across the floor. 

it’s neil. it’s always neil. 

“what happened. where are you,” andrew tries not to snarl. 

“it’s. i’m. i’m okay,” neil says, breath laboured, and the phone’s cheap plastic casing creaks, threatening to crack in andrew’s hand. 

“shut up. just tell me where,” he hangs up and doesn’t remember getting downstairs, couldn’t tell you the path he took to get across town if either of their lives depended on it, but nothing and no one will ever hold that kind of power in their hands again so long as he’s still breathing. 

there’s blood everywhere. there’s a guy lying very recently dead behind the dumpster that neil is sitting against and what’s left of his veins is pooled under his head, still oozing thick and sluggish from his cut throat; a paltry display next to the spray of it that has drenched neil from head to waist. 

andrew gets to take one deep breath of relief when he puts that together. then he sees the totally separate bloodstain blooming high on neil’s thigh, darkening both neil’s jeans and andrew’s vision. 

he’s more than familiar with what it feels like to experience his own will and ability to live drain slowly out of his body, but andrew doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to this feeling - the sight of neil in danger and what that does to his brain, his lungs, his …. 

“it missed the artery. i’m fine. i was just winded, on the phone. i’m sorry i should have known better than to call until i - i didn’t think, i shouldn’t have - 

a year or two ago, andrew would be down on his knees in a filthy alleyway right about now, trying to tear neil’s pants off in a way that wasn’t going to prove enjoyable for either of them. 

now, though. 

“okay,” he says, “it’s okay,” and he’s surprised to find that it actually is. he’s already thinking of ways to get rid of the body and that makes his head spin in a whole new way, and oh isn’t that unpleasant - he hadn’t thought there were any more ways for it to do that. 

they both wash off in a mostly clean pond they find on the edges of the field they bury the body in but they probably needn’t have bothered. 

higgins gets back to them the next day to tell them that the guy had a record, but was just a run of the mill scumbag in a rare positive turn of events for them. no family to come looking and even less chance that the cops would care to press charges if the body resurfaced. 

that night, andrew changes out the bandages on neil’s shallow stab wound for the second time and finds that tonight, lately, now, his hands seek and maintain contact with neil’s body the same way they used to grasp at the knife that’s no longer under his pillow. 

it’s not fear, though, or an obsessive need to protect neil, though he’s nowhere near rid of either. 

it’s trust, he realizes, when he unpacks what happened with betsy, later on. 

andrew thought that trusting neil to protect himself from the actions of others was the biggest thing he was capable of. 

trusting neil in the face of ändrew’s own instincts to take over, to lose his mind, to willingly let himself tip over into the darkness is new, and it is huge. 

 

 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 

 

rodriguez is from arizona just like renee, but neil knows that’s entirely besides the point when andrew volunteers them to be the ones that meet her at the airport and they find renee standing right next to her. 

neil might hug renee any other time, finds he kind of wants to right now and god that’s weird, but he settles for brushing his fingers up over the back of her wrist to take rodriquez’s bag from her. 

everyone but them and kevin had flown out for the holidays, as usual, so they’d been on the court when wymack had gotten the call. rodriguez; their freshman striker and the first player neil had ever handpicked for the line had been assaulted by an ex boyfriend. he was in the hospital and she wasn’t, but that didn’t mean he was the worse off of the two and no one knows that better than andrew and neil. 

them being the only ones still in town is also entirely besides the point, neil realizes belatedly, when andrew puts his hands in his pockets and stops in front of rodriguez, an entire arm’s length away but looking her right in the eye. 

“do you feel safe to come back with us?” he asks, and when neil glances at her to hear her answer his stomach turns over. he hasn’t seen that expression since seth’s death hollowed allison out. 

rodriguez only nods, but she actually considers the question, which heartens neil about as much as anything could right then. she doesn’t turn to say anything to renee, not even when andrew nods at her before turning and leading rodriguez away, but renee only smiles at neil and tells him she’s glad rodriguez has them before she’s walking off to check in for her return flight. 

she says “i’m glad she has you both, now,” almost as if to suggest that she herself ‘had’ them - needed them - in some way, at some point and neil marvels at that as he hurries to rodriguez’s open side. 

“one or both of us is going to be out here all night, and all our doors are going to be kept open during the day,” andrew says when they reach the threshold of what has become only one of two girls’ rooms on this floor, even though the whole thing is occupied by foxes now. 

no one sets foot on this floor without andrew’s knowledge and approval these days, and the whole campus knows that. 

“you don’t need to do that, i’m o-” rodriguez starts to say, but stops and then stumbles over her words until andrew steps in. 

“since when do you get to tell me what to do, rookie?” he asks, but there’s no heat to it, so much so that it comes across sounding almost, almost kind. 

“since never and not until not ever,” she answers promptly and something about the routine of it makes the beginnings of what don’t become a smile (but could have) fracture the thin line of her mouth. 

 

#

 

“i know you don’t want to talk and no one’s going to make you, but if you’re worried about the court case, if you -” neil puts his hand on the cushion that separates them on the couch, needing her attention but needing more for her to know that he isn’t going to touch her, no one is going to touch her without her saying they could ever, ever again. “if you don’t want to go through with it you don’t have to. there are ways to keep you safe that don’t require prison.” 

neil doesn’t quite know what he’s saying, honestly. he does, actually, but the fact that he’s saying it all makes no sense to him at all. they don’t do this anymore. they don’t deal with problems that aren’t theirs because they no longer have to. to voluntarily invite themselves to someone else’s fight would be madness. senseless and needless and reckless and all the things they aren’t, now that they don’t have to be. 

“i kind of offered to kill him, i think,” neil tells andrew that evening, when they’re sitting down to the first dinner that sees everyone back on campus. there’s music pounding along the wall that separates theirs from nicky and aaron’s room and kevin is doing sit-ups in front of old game footage he’s streaming from his laptop onto his new stupidly huge tv. he doesn’t look up at what neil says, though there’s no way he didn’t hear. because trust kevin’s absolute selfishness to be the only thing that never changes around here. 

andrew looks up from where he’s scooping ice cream out of the tub with shards of fortune cookie rather than a spoon and has the gall to look like he’s confused. 

“for rodriguez,” neil clarifies. 

he wonders if on a subconscious level he opted to say this in front of kevin knowing that though he doesn’t care for neil personally, he still needs his body professionally and thus won’t let andrew murder him just yet. maybe next year. 

but “oh,” is all andrew says before he goes back to his task. ‘dinner’, he likes to call it. 

“let me know what she decides.” 

 

 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 

 

chen and jackson are the ones that find kevin passed out in the elevator and andrew is begrudgingly impressed or something like it when they don’t even bother trying to drag him out, opt to jam the button that keeps the doors open until they can call andrew to come clean up what is apparently - in their minds - his mess. 

in the end neil does most of the heavy lifting while andrew watches on from the door to their room, arms crossed and face as close to passive as it gets. 

it’s routine by now to get kevin inside, get his shoes and jeans off and toss him onto his bed, not face first because neil says they can’t let him die. 

kevin hardly does this at all anymore, but he makes up for the now few and far between benders by making them truly epic when they do occur. 

it’s not like he’ll ever apologize for it, or thank them for taking care of him, but andrew suspects there’s something to be read in how no matter how horrifically trashed kevin gets, he always knows to get to somewhere close enough for them to be the ones that find him. 

it’s basic self preservation maybe. but maybe - 

“i never thought i’d have to be the one to say this - actually i can’t believe anyone has to say this period, but you know kevin isn’t your responsibility, right? you don’t have to pick and choose who to claim anymore. no one has to be your business.” 

allison is facetiming neil and andrew is in the room not because he wants to listen to this, but because he’s always wherever neil is. 

neil is saying something in response, something dismissive and self-deprecating, but andrew isn’t listening because all of his attention is tunneled into a thought instead. 

maybe it’s not so much a thought as an image. a simple, flat picture that is laid out in his mind as one layer, a single dimension for his consideration. 

it’s not a breakdown of offense and defense, or even ‘the ones that were here when’ and ‘the new, the now.’ it’s a little bit ‘us’ and ‘other’, but only so far as every single thing is, always has been and always will be when it pertains to himself and neil and anything or anyone else. 

beyond that, it’s truly singular. 

simply so. 

their team. 

them. 

 

#

 

when neil eventually gets off the phone, standing up to stretch out the kinks in his back, andrew rolls over into the space he’d just vacated, inexplicably pleased when neil lies right back down on top of him. 

“hey,” neil says, tucking his hands between andrew’s back and the still warm sheets and settling with his ear notched up under andrew’s collarbone, his cheekbone a warm hum across andrew’s chest when he speaks. 

“you should get tickets for that thing. wilds and boyd’s thing,” andrew says, closing his eyes and tilting his face up into the late afternoon that’s slicing across neil’s pillow. 

“their … their engagement party, you mean?” neil asks, but doesn’t get a response, which is an answer in itself. “i thought i’d have to drag you to the actual wedding, how come you’re willing to go to this too? what am i gonna owe you?” 

still, andrew says nothing, because that’s exactly what he means. 

that’s what neil will owe him. 

nothing. 

that’s what it takes, these days, for andrew to be a part of what’s going on around him, all the things and times and places and sights and sensations and sounds that have settled around them both, no longer caging them in, but still setting them down and keeping them there, tethering in a way that doesn’t make him feel restrained. 

that’s what it costs andrew, now, to take part. 

nothing at all. 

 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

 

 

kevin is holding some kind of rookie conference in the living room when they wake up and no one really pays much attention to neil and andrew wandering in to set up shop by the coffee machine. 

there’s a game on the tv and the surface of the coffee table plus most of the floor is covered in paper, a sea of sheets broken up only by the freshmen plopped on their butts in a line in front of the tv, attention split precisely between the screen and kevin where he stands next to it, gesticulating like a man possessed. 

andrew has a hot mug between his hands and is still waking up, slowly swinging his feet between the counter he’s sitting up on and neil’s shins, when nicky wanders in looking at his phone, listing off places he wants to order dinner from instead of saying hello, or say, knocking. 

it’s a lot. 

it’s a never ending hum of sound and the unmistakable presence of bodies in andrew’s space. 

it’s andrew and it’s neil and it’s all the rest. 

it’s andrew + neil + + + + 

it’s all. 

and it is everything. 

 

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/  
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/  
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/


End file.
